


On Her Terms

by EmmG



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, F/M, Solas wins but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 16:02:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5546447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmG/pseuds/EmmG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His victory is ash in her mouth even when he speaks of love. This world isn't hers and she will never belong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Her Terms

She trudges through corpses. Her tears are long spent, having scorched a path down her face for others to follow, a vallaslin of grief. Breathing is hard and perhaps it's sorrow crushing her from within, but this is a wrong time for flowery poetry - her staff is broken, one half forgotten and the other impaling her through the chest. She can feel the blood in her lungs as it rises and foams at her mouth, can count how many ribs are broken for whenever she inhales they fracture further, accompanied by an audible _crack crack crack._

The Herald of Andraste, the famed Inquisitor, stabbed by a servant of Fen'Harel with her own weapon. The irony is crippling.

She hears him even before he announces himself, but doesn't turn around, refuses to indulge him.

"Forgive me, I cannot stand," her voice conveys, a tiny thing slashed from so many angles with glass and pain and loss.

\--

The sky still burns when he finds her. She wears a mask of insanity; one he's landed a hand in crafting. They spent hours, years ago when she was still a child thrust into a position of power, deciding on runes to engrave into her staff. How she cherished his council then. The thing of beauty has been snapped in two and the sharp end driven through her chest, inches from the heart. As she stumbles forth, blood trickles down her front and legs, painting her steps red.

Until she sinks to her knees, hands digging into the wet earth. Then she is but a broken martyr.

He calls her name a second time yet she does not respond.

She comes alive only when he attempts to heal her. The familiar untamed wildness surges back into her gaze as she retaliates, her magic clashing with his with surprising vigor. She looks abashed, and so does he even though he should know better. The Veil is down, its power everywhere, easy to tap into.

"Don't you dare," Lavellan hisses through bloody lips. "I don't belong here."

She's looking up at him, her chin brushing his knee as he comes closer. Slowly, her lowers himself to her level.

“You belong with me, ma vhenan,” he says softly.

Her mind is splintered. He could slip his fingers beneath those cracks and watch them come undone, coax the fissure into growing. And then rebuild it. He knows how to lie and she’s always been susceptible to his low, commanding tones – at this point what is one more deception if it keeps her living.

But she feels it, the perceptive girl that she is, and pushes back. His influence crumbles to dust under her protest to submit and for the first time he feels a profound desperation. Finality claws at his heart until he isn’t himself. He attempts to draw her into his arms but she screams, her agony brilliant and loud, staining the front of his tunic scarlet.

“Now you want me,” she is speaking words he doesn’t wish to hear, words that were never true. “Now that there is no one left to oppose you and you can take whatever you wish. Before, I was a distraction but now you have nothing so why not reclaim me.”

“No, no,” he says, his voice catching, climbing, furious, hopeless all at once. He captures her face and kisses her, disregarding the blood, caring not for her pain. “Ar lath ma. You know this, my love, my heart. It was never so. If I could have… in another world…”

She laughs against his lips, but kisses him back nevertheless. He clings to that brief display of affection; any morsel she’s willing to throw him. He’s a true dog then, finally worthy of his mockery of a title, as he grovels at her feet.

“I should have never loved you, but I did. Still do,” she confesses.

He buries his face in her matted hair, careful fingers hovering over her back, never coming into contact in fear of encouraging the staff to pierce through. For a moment, he’s filled with a perverse kind of hope. Hope that her strength will finally falter long enough for him to carry her away. She’s so near the precipice, requires but one small shove.

“At any rate,” Lavellan resumes, “you have your new world, Solas. Never forget the lives you sacrificed for the glory of a People long gone. Remember me and rot.”

Her hands press into the back of his neck as she crashes her beaten body against him. Just as her chest meets his, the staff rips through the last barrier. She shivers, seizes, and goes limp in his arms, her lips lingering on his throat long enough to leave behind a bloody imprint. A parting gift.

He doesn’t understand at first, even as he feels for the jarring wood coming out of her back. Even as she bleeds out in his embrace.

All that remains is a doll, a lifeless husk.

And she was right. None of it was worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry.
> 
> On another note, I do love those fuck-you-Solas stories. Don't get me wrong, I'm pure Solavellan trash but he deserves to suffer.


End file.
